Thursday 1st December 2005

England Sevens captain Simon Amor (Gloucester) gives his diary from day one of the Emirates Airline Dubai Sevens...

“It was quite an impressive day for England as the first tournament in the IRB Sevens series is always tough and the first games in particular are hard.  International sevens is quite alien to a few of the players who are new to the squad as they are used to XVs so to put in the performance we did over the first three games was very pleasing.

I was lucky to get on the end of a few good passes to score a couple of tries but the boys in the middle were working very hard, and the three new caps played really well.

I am massively pleased for Tom Varndell (Leicester Tigers, who had an outstanding first day on his debut), and to be honest this is one of the best squads of 12 I have ever played with. Every single one of the players fully deserves their place in this England team.

The pressures you are put under out here in Dubai are enormous both physically as it is so hot and mentally playing in front of 30,000 people so I am pleased with the whole squad performance.

The crowd were awesome today and its such a great experience to play in front of such a big crowd, particularly on the first day.

My dad is fortunate enough to have some business contacts over here in Dubai so he has flown in and is watching us so that’s great to be able to catch up with him and for him to support us from the sidelines.

Tomorrow we face Argentina in the quarter finals and know we have to step up a gear if we want to go on and retain our Dubai Sevens title.”